As The Theater Scene Improves, Its Needs Become More Obvious

STATE OF THE ARTS AN AGENDA FOR THE '90s THEATER The challenge: Demanding quality - and getting it

September 24, 1989|By Elizabeth Maupin, Sentinel Theater critic

The divergence of opinions about theater in Central Florida sounds a little like the title of an epic novel. War and Peace. North and South. The Agony and the Ecstasy.

In the case of theater, the title would be Hope and Despair - hope that the area's theater is on the brink of something big and despair that the journey there is taking far too long.

Listen, for example, to Sara Daspin, artistic director of Seminole Community College's Fine Arts Theatre and associate artistic director of the Orlando Shakespeare Festival: ''I really, truly am optimistic. I think Orlando is just beginning to explode with creativity, with the need to see the best theater available.''

Now listen to Tom Nowicki, a stage, film and television actor who has to leave Orlando to find work:

''I'm really disappointed at how little theater has changed. Things that we're looking forward to having now - the Orlando Shakespeare Festival, Orlando Theatre Project - are things that I thought we'd have by 1986.''

Who is right? Probably both, and that's the conflicting nature of theater in Central Florida. Where one person sees vitality and growth, another sees sluggishness or complacency. Sometimes the same person sees all those things.

The fact is that Central Florida theater has changed enough in recent years to beget both hope and frustration. If you think of good theater as an oasis in the desert, such an oasis used to be nowhere in sight, most theater professionals agree. To some people, now that the oasis lies on the horizon, that horizon just seems farther and farther away.

In the past five years, the area's theater scene has grown - in the number and variety of its offerings, in the quantity and quality of its talent, in the size and diversity of its audience. Established theaters have improved their offerings; new groups have sprung up, and some of them are succeeding. Talented actors and technicians have moved to the area. Audiences have become larger, more interested in variety and younger than before.

And, in the drive toward excellence, the needs of theater have become that much clearer. It needs an established non-profit professional theater company with its own permanent home. It needs training for serious adult actors and theater education for children. It needs improvement in the quality and consistency of its established theaters and facilities in which its fledgling theaters can experiment and grow. And it needs people with the creative spark and the vision to make it all take place.

''It's obvious that we've made a lot of progress in every area of the theater community,'' said Michael Fortner, Civic Theatre of Central Florida's artistic director. ''Even though we've had risings and fallings in the fortunes of some groups, the risings have been more dominant.''

Progress has been apparent with:

- The Civic, one of the largest community, or amateur, theaters in the country, whose season subscriptions have grown by more than 60 percent in the last five years and whose full-time professional staff has increased from five people to nine.

- The 5-year-old Tropical Theatre, which changed its name this year to Theatre Downtown.

- The fledgling Orlando Shakespeare Festival, whose long-delayed first season will take place this fall.

- The Orlando Theatre Project, an infrequently seen professional company that eventually will make its first home in the renovated Dr. Phillips Center for Performing Arts on Lake Ivanhoe.

- The newborn Bluebeard Players in Orlando, the regrouping Ensemble Theatre of Florida in Melbourne and a number of other groups.

There have been casualties - notably Celebrity Dinner Theater, a sometimes ambitious professional company that operated in Orlando's Beacham Theatre from February 1985 to January 1986 and, under different management, for several months in early 1987. Other groups have suffered for lack of places to perform. Tropical Theatre was driven out of its former home when its roof collapsed last summer, and Ensemble Theatre of Florida, a small professional company in Melbourne, was forced out of its theater for several months last winter by arson.

Still, theater thrives.

''Now we have more people used to seeing alternative theater, as well as commercial theater,'' Daspin said. ''They're going to demand both.''

Now, not only alternative theaters but also mainstream ones are experimenting with plays that Orlando has never before seen.

''We want people to be challenged,'' said David Clevinger, artistic director of the IceHouse Players, a small community theater in Mount Dora. ''We want them at least to think.''

Alternative groups are learning, as well, how to choose more appealing programming.

''We've gotten away from the more esoteric works,'' said actor/director Peg O'Keef, president of Theatre Downtown's board. ''We've tried to stay with things that move people but are more accessible. At least now the audiences understand what they're being offended by.''